


The Adventures of Hamish and William

by TheLastComment



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Sherlock (TV)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-09-01
Packaged: 2017-12-24 21:29:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/944867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLastComment/pseuds/TheLastComment
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some letters show up at 221 Baker Street on a Sunday morning...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Case of the Sunday Post

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic that I've actually written with the intent of putting out for people to read. So, yeah.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter told from John's POV, and written in the style of the original canon.

Okay, well, it isn’t exactly a case. But I just had to write this up, even if it is only for myself, and to sort out my thoughts. Yesterday, Sunday, June 24, a letter came. Dropped right in the front hall. Neatly addressed to Hamish, complete to which room he lived in. Handwritten address. I’m no Sherlock, but even I could tell that. Fancy paper too. Sherlock would have known everything about it, I thought. He knew every piece of paper from every letter-shop in town, could figure out ones from across the country and France, given a minute or two, and give you a very good guess on the rest of the world. I was just coming over, as we had a client who had arranged an appointment versus just walking in like they usually did.

“Sherlock, did you see this letter to Hamish?” I asked when I got up the stairs.

“But, the post doesn’t come on Sundays,” Molly commented.

“No, generally, it doesn’t,” Sherlock lazily said. He had no interest at all in the fact that Hamish had been sent a letter, or the odd fact that it had come on a Sunday.

“What do you mean, ‘generally,’?” Molly asked. “It never comes on Sunday. Only couriers come on Sunday, and that’s if you pay them a lot of money.”

“And you don’t have to put an address on things delivered by couriers,” I said.

Sherlock called Hamish down. She looked like both her parents, in her own way. Her hair had that same jet-black color as Sherlock’s, but was neat and plain like Molly’s. She had a caring face, when she wanted to. At other times, it would be completely blank, like Sherlock’s was when he was making deductions, but before he had the breakthrough moment. Willie was following right after her. Since Mary and I had taken the flat next door, and Hamish and William were born within six months of each other, they were inseparable. Like brother and sister. Willie was a lot like Mary and I, though he did have a record of being a bit of a smart-alec when the mood struck him, obviously thanks to all the time around 221 B. But they were both well-behaved and, importantly, got along with the other kids at their school. Between Sherlock’s anti-social tendencies and his other odd mannerisms, Mary, Molly, and I had worried that they’d have a hard time making friends at school, back when they had started year one. But they had an additional friend with them or were with their friends at least twice a month on the weekends.

There was a knock before Sherlock could open the letter. Molly hurried the two kids back upstairs as Sherlock invited our client in. He was a middle-aged man. Nothing surprising there. Most of our clients were. But, unlike most of them, this one had a butler, who followed him, always three feet behind him. I could tell the butler was armed. He took no effort to conceal the gun holstered to his waist.

Sherlock took his armchair before inviting our client to sit down. He had had a habit of doing so ever since Moriarty had visited him after that case, but I never could get the story of why out of him. I guessed that Moriarty had sat in his chair. Actual twelve-year-old he is when it comes to some things, that irritated him.

“Make it short and interesting, if you want me to take the case,” Sherlock said. “I don’t have all day and I can tell that you lead a boring life with two cats and your staff as your only companions so I can’t imagine what is so desperate that you’ve come to me with an armed bodyguard in tow. Though, you must be paranoid about something if you keep him three feet behind your left shoulder at all time. Am I right in assuming that he is left-handed?”

Our poor client looked a bit taken aback. “Yes, Marx here is left-handed.,” he admitted.

“So, your case,” Sherlock said. He was getting impatient.

I won’t bother writing up the rest of that case. Sherlock solved it from the sitting room. Once explained, it was pretty obvious that our client was just what Sherlock called an “Anderson”, “someone who likes to think he’s smart, but just doesn’t notice the right things…ever.” This man in particular was just a bit more paranoid than most people.

Once we had shown our client out, Sherlock called Hamish back down. Willie was in tow again. They seemed to have gotten something all over them. I didn’t want to know what “experiments” they had been performing this time, but Molly took them back to the kitchen to clean them off first. While she was, Sherlock told me to go check my own mail. I had no clue why, but I went back out and walked the few feet to my own door, where Mary was just coming out, confusedly holding a letter of the same paper and handwriting, addressed to William.

“But…the post doesn’t come on Sundays,” she said.

“Hamish got one too,” I said. “Sherlock seems to think he knows the answers though,” I said. “He actually sent me to check our mail, I assume to see if William got one.”

So, half an hour later, with Hamish and Willie cleaned up from their latest experiment, we were all in the sitting room of 221 B Baker Street with two impossible letters on our hands. Since both had received the letters, I feared that someone was targeting them. But Sherlock calmly opened both of them.

“Just as I had thought,” he muttered to himself. “There is one post that comes on Sundays,” he declared.”It doesn’t come to everyone, but it comes on a Sunday in June to those it is going to.”

“Can you stop sounding all mysterious and just tell us why there are two letters that came on a bloody Sunday?” I burst out, a bit louder than I expected to.

Sherlock handed me the envelope addressed to Willie, now with the letterhead sticking out. I stared at it in disbelief. How in the world?

“But how did you know it would be that?” I asked. It was pretty clear that Sherlock knew something I didn’t.

“Oh, Mycroft told me ages ago,” he replied in is ‘I knew this was going to happen’ voice. “Back when they were born, actually. Warned me that we might be getting some letters on one Sunday a few years down the road. He doesn’t know, but I looked further into it and uncovered for myself the fact that there is in fact a magical community in underground existence. They keep to themselves, and tend to cover their tracks well, but I was able to confirm my findings through Mycroft, who acts as some sort of permanent liaison between their government and ours.

“But Willie and I don’t have any superpowers,” Hamish interjected. I mean, we’re just regular kids.

“Smarter than them, but otherwise, regular,” Willie agreed.

The next day, nobody was still in belief of the whole thing, but we made an outing to an obscure address on the other side of London, where, according to the letters, which I was still skeptical of, despite the fact that Sherlock assured me that they were 100% genuine, Hamish and William would be able to obtain supplies for this wizard school called Hogwarts. We were apparently looking for a place called “the Leaky Cauldron,” which served as the gateway to another place called “Diagon Alley.” It all sounded a bit shifty to me, but Sherlock seemed to know what he was doing, and Mary and Molly were just following along, chatting. I had a feeling that Sherlock had filled Molly in a bit more, and she was filling Mary in as we walked down the sidewalk.

“I think I see it, Uncle Sherlock!” William cried. “Just there on the left!”

Sherlock came back and whispered to me “we’ll have to trust them. These wizards have put a bunch of protections around these sorts of places, according to the information I’ve gleaned, but this lines up with the records I was able to access. Willie seemed to be holding a door open for Hamish, and Sherlock ran to catch up with them, taking what I assumed was the door from Willie and looking inside, mumbling to himself.

When I got to this invisible door and turned to follow Willie and Hamish, who had disappeared inside the building, I was amazed at what I saw. It was a cross between a hotel lobby, restaurant, and bar. Well lit, nicely kept, stairs going up somewhere else, but scattered with tables, which had people eating and drinking at them, and a bar along one of the walls.

A man came up and greeted us. “Firs’ time?” He asked. Sherlock handed him the letters, which I had read. They did say to hand the letter to whoever greeted us once inside, and that they would help us around with finding things and getting money changed. “Right this way,” the man, large, but not particularly threatening, said to us, gesturing towards an archway at the back of the odd room. He pulled out a stick and tapped a few bricks, as the whole thing was inlaid on a solid wall. To my amazement, the bricks started to move away, revealing a whole crowded pedestrian street. We went through the now-hollow arch. Mary and Molly took a hold of Willie and Hamish’s hands, respectively, for fear of losing them in the crowd and the man led us through the narrow street to a large white building. “Gringotts” it read over the entranceway.

“Yell be able ter exchange monies here,” he said, holding the door open.

We were ushered into a huge hall. There were rows upon rows of desks, and at each one of them sat a short little man with pointy ears, each of them doing paperwork. Our guide took us over to a desk against the wall.

“New ‘uns,” he said. “’Rents need to exchange money ter get surplies.” And then the man left, giving the letters back to Sherlock, and putting a piece of paper in my hands. I examined it as Sherlock took care of the money. It was a map of some sort, but there were moving pictures on it. Moving pictures on a piece of paper! I showed it to Mary, who was just as unbelieving as I was.

We left the Gringotts place with a cloth pouch of funny coins. They didn’t have the Queen’s face on them, and they were all funny sized and made of different metals. I actually suspected that some of them were made of gold, though that was impossible, gold was getting so scarce. I looked at the piece of paper.

“What all do we need to buy?” I asked Sherlock, who was still holding the letters, which had the lists of supplies.

“Books, robes, ingredients,” he summarized, handing me Willie’s letter. The six of us stood in the street there, trying to get our bearings on the moving map, and figuring out what order to get things in would be the best. We finally decided to split up. Most of the stuff seemed pretty standardized. Mary and Molly would take the kids to get fitted for the uniforms, while Sherlock and I would get the books and supplies. We’d then meet up in an hour and go to the wand shop. My head was still spinning at all of this. Magic? And Willie and Hamish? But we carried on. If Sherlock accepted it, there must be some grain of reason to it. The man who deleted the solar system, believing in magic. What a sight.

There must be a lot of kids that attended this Hogwarts School. The bookshop and the other shop for the potions ingredients had premade sets of books and ingredients for first year students.

“Are you together?” the cashier asked us as Sherlock fiddled around with the strange coins, making conversation to take up the time.

“Yes, well, no, well, we’re neighbors,” Sherlock said. “Both our kids received letters, and so they’re off with their mothers getting fitted.” His social skills had improved since I had met him, I will hand him that. “We’re just getting their books and things.”

“Three of the gold ones, a silver one, and five of the brown ones,” she said, explaining the funny wizard currency. “That’s nice. They’ll know someone then. Much better than going in knowing nobody, I’d say. I had to. Both me parents were Muggles as well.”

“Sorry, what?” I asked.

“Muggles,” she said. “Wizard term for non-wizards. It’s nothing rude. It’s just like saying that someone’s French and another person’s Spanish. Well, have a nice day!”

We were just walking out of the shop when she called back.

“Wait! You’re them!” she cried. “That detective that fell, and his friend who blogged about the cases. Sherlock and I turned around.

“Yes, we are,” he coolly admitted.

“I was a little girl when you fell. Just back from my first year at Hogwarts. I remember the news stories! Even there, you were famous for a few weeks, since that Moriarty had been a student. He got kicked out, second year, and by the Ministry no less, but he had been one.”

“Oh,” Sherlock said. “Interesting.” I could tell this was going to his mind-palace, but that he wasn’t that concerned with that bit of information at the moment.

“Well, it was nice meeting you,” she said as we left. Was there nowhere we weren’t the famous detective and blogger? I had actually been starting to enjoy the anonymity. No turning heads, curious eyes. Everything else went fine though. We got the other potions stuff, met back up to go to the wand shop, and then got the other oddball things that were on the list, which we found checked itself off as we bought things. Mary commented that if only the grocery list did that…

Before going back to Baker Street, we stopped in that odd room, The Leaky Cauldron, to repackage everything, make sure it just looked like large packages for any regular boarding school, and a stranger there convinced us to have tea, claiming that the food was top-notch at a hard to beat price.

Finally back to Baker Street, we unpackaged everything and sorted it all out. Hamish and Willie were having a field day looking at all the stuff, and begged to try some of the stuff in the books before they got to school. Sherlock, Mary, Molly, and I all looked at each other. We feared how it would end if we did. Not that we didn’t trust them, but…they had a track record of making a mess with their chemistry experiments, and that was just baking soda and vinegar. I did not want to know what they’d do with a magical stick.

“Um, not today,” I told them. “You’ll just have to wait for school to start.”

“Aw,” they both moaned.

“How about we let them have their books, so they can read them?” Mary suggested.

“Oh, please can we?” they both asked. I didn’t see any harm in them reading, and Sherlock and I had agreed as we riding the taxi with the packages that we were going to keep their…wands…in a safe place until school started, partly so we didn’t have to worry about them trying anything, partly so they didn’t break them.


	2. Hamish and the Adventure of the Red Express, part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hamish and William depart for Hogwarts...

For the first time in my life, I was excited for school to start. It was just one more day until Willie and I would be off to our new school…a school of magic! I didn’t believe the letter myself when it came, saying that I was a witch (the good kind, of course) and that I was invited to a school for other witches and wizards. Dad would have scoffed at the idea of magic. I had always thought fantasy novels interesting. There was always something fun in the adventure. But magic…real? And Willie and I having it?

It made some of our explosions make sense though. I had talked to another girl while getting my robes. She had said all of her siblings, who had gone to Hogwarts, had accidentally done magic when they were little, though she couldn’t remember it herself. Whenever Willie and I got too excited about something, or angry at each other, things tended to explode. Dad had always blamed it on a bad mix of chemicals…

But he had known all along! Uncle Mycroft had told him! And then he had looked into it further! I can’t imagine what he must have thought when that happened. He doesn’t even bother with the solar system, so why would he believe in magic?

I didn’t want to go to sleep that night, but I really wanted to. I was afraid if I slept I would wake up and these last few weeks of reading all my new books would have just been a crazy, amazing, wonderful dream. Then again, the part of me that knew it all real was so excited to go to a new school and meet loads of new people and things like that. I was sure Willie was excited as well. It was all we could talk about, this new school and magic. We were going to miss our old friends, but we’d still see them over the holidays, and a few of them were going to different schools anyways, so we had already been planning on not seeing them as often anyways.

I finally drifted off to sleep sometime between 11 and midnight. I know Mum wanted me to go to sleep earlier, so I’d be ready for the morning, but I just couldn’t go to sleep. I woke up in the morning as soon as my alarm went off though. Today was the day! We had a special breakfast; even Dad helped Mrs. Hudson cook.

At 9 AM, we left for King’s Cross so Willie and I could catch the train to Hogwarts. We had our cases all packed. The school had sent us special trunks for all our stuff; they even had our names on them! I had read and reread the letter we got a few weeks after the first one again and again. We were leaving from a Platform 9¾! It didn’t actually exist, but there was some magic portal that would take us to it, somewhere between platforms 9 and 10. The directions just said to look for other people with similar trolleys to ours, and follow them. Sherlock had tried to convince Uncle Mycroft to let him look at surveillance tapes to find out which barrier, but he didn’t let him.

Willie and I sat in one cab with Mum and Aunt Mary. Dad and Uncle John were in another cab with our stuff. I was really excited just to get to see King’s Cross. The place was huge. A nice piece of architecture. Whenever we went on trains, we always left from a smaller station. And it was almost always something to do with one of Dad’s cases.

The taxis dropped us off and we went inside. According to my books, Hogwarts was in the middle of nowhere, so I guess it made sense to have everyone take a train there. Nobody notices people coming and going in a train station. I followed my parents, who were following the signs, to platforms 9 and 10. Mum had told me to keep an eye out for anyone with similar cases to mine and Willie’s who looked like they knew what they were doing.

“Look Mum!” I cried. “There’s a kid with an owl on top of his cases!” Owls were one of the accepted pets at Hogwarts, and I couldn’t imagine any other places that would let you have owls as pets. We followed him, but he had vanished by the time we got to the arch I had seen him standing under.

I really wanted a cat as my pet. But Dad hadn’t exchanged enough money to get one when we went to Diagon Alley, and I wasn’t going to ask for one afterwards. I had asked Mum one night, though, and she promised that if I had good marks at Christmas, then we’d see about it. Mum liked cats a lot more than Dad.

We stood around and kept watching people. A station attendant came an asked us if he could help, since we probably looked lost. Dad quickly said we were just waiting for someone else and dismissed him.

Willie and I got tired of standing, so we went to lean on the side of the arch.

“Mum!” he cried. “Look!” He was waving his arm around, but his arm was _inside the arch_. “I think I found it!”

“Don’t talk so loud, you’ll attract attention,” another voice scolded from behind our parents.

Dad had taught me for the longest time to try and deduce people when I met them. At least something about them. It was a standing habit of mine now. I took a quick glance at who had said that. Male. Mid-to-late twenties. English. I couldn’t place region any more exact than that. Dad could do down to which part of town you were from. Left handed, not a desk-worker, but not a laborer either. Two kids and a wife in tow, about my age. Married early and in late twenties, or looking young and in early thirties. Pockets. I saw a length in his pocket, just over a foot long, thin, and not perfectly straight. Like a stick in his pocket. So, wizard.

“First year?” he asked. Willie and I nodded.

“Is this how you get to platform 9¾” I asked him.

“Straight through the barrier,” he said. “You might want to take it at a bit of a run and close your eyes. Don’t worry; it’s their first time too.” He gestured to his two kids. Twins! I should have been able to tell, even if they were fraternal twins. The six adults backed up to give us some space, and, one by one, we took our running go at the wall. The twins went through. I followed them, really hoping that it didn’t somehow solidify on me. Willie came after me. And then all our parents walked through.

“Neat,” was all my dad could muster as a response to the sight that greeted him on this side of the barrier. No doubt his memory was replaying the events of the last few seconds and trying to figure out how this all worked. We were at a hidden platform in King’s Cross, one that the space didn’t exist for, but that definitely existed. I turned to look at the train. Vintage carriages and a steam engine. It was quite picturesque. On each carriage that I was at an angle to see, it read “Hogwarts Express” in gold lettering. The twins looked to their parents for what to do next. So it was completely normal to not know what to do. Good. I couldn’t go to a new school looking like an idiot, or worse, an Anderson.

“Do you want to sit with Melody and I on the train?” one of the twins asked Willie and I. “We don’t really know anyone either. Mum made us go to a Muggle school up until we could start at Hogwarts.”

“Yeah, sure,” I replied, glad to have someone to sit with on the train, and to know that I was already on my way to making friends.

We stood around talking about our least and most favorite classes from our old schools, as we had actually arrived a bit early, while our parents were discussing who knows what a few feet off from us. Turned out Scott and I both liked maths and chemistry, and Willie and Melody were both really big football fans. Melody then started to go on and on about some wizard sport called Quidditch, which was according to her, an “airborne soccer, with more balls, and a lot more danger!”

“I’m going to try for my house team,” she proudly declared. “First years never make it, but I’ve got to try.”

The whistle on the train blew. We had 15 minutes to get our stuff on the train and say goodbye to our parents. Melody and Scott’s parents told them to get their stuff on first. It was much easier to run on and wave goodbye than it was to carry your luggage on, according to their parents. I trusted their word. They were wizards and had gone through this place themselves, many years previously.

The four of us found a cabin at the back of the train that was empty and deposited our trunks there. We ran back out, each eager to say goodbye to our respective parents. Willie and I also said goodbye to each other’s parents, who we had always known as aunt and uncle, despite the lack of blood relation. They were as good as family. Dad and Uncle Watson were inseparable and could argue like an old married couple on occasion. Mum and Aunt Mary would just watch and laugh at the two of them.

Mum made me promise to write as regularly as I could. At least once a month. Dad didn’t really care much. “Try not to die,” he’d said. Well that was reassuring. Did students at Hogwarts often die? Uncle John and Aunt Mary advised Willie and I to stay out of trouble. I’m sure they didn’t want any letters about Willie, and it was common knowledge that we stuck together most of the time, and that I was often able to reason Willie in and out of certain scenarios.

And so, as the red train started to depart, the four of us rushed back to our cabin to take our seats. We all leaned out the window for a final wave goodbye. As we faded out of sight, I could see all of our parents turn to talk with each other. No doubt they were going to all talk about us and become friends and things like that. I pushed it from my mind though, it didn’t matter. No, now, it was time to worry about what my new school would be like. Willie and I grilled Melody and Scott for what they knew about Hogwarts. It had been a while since their parents had been there, and they didn’t know anyone who attended, so we weren’t able to learn much. We were told to expect a huge castle, with amazing grounds, and a lot of really crazy teachers. Also that the stairs were supposed to be one of the most confusing things about the castle, along with the innumerable hallways and shortcuts.

Melody and Scott then asked Willie and me about what it was like to have Sherlock Holmes and John Watson for parents.

“Never a dull moment,” Willie summarized immediately.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Dad is always trying to get me to deduce things. He’s sure that I can be as smart as him, if I try.  Uncle John’s a lot more ‘that’s nice. Try not to get into trouble’ most of the time.”

“And people are always stopping our dads in the streets like ‘are you really them?’” Willie added. That was so true.

“At least you’ve got a chance at some anonymity,” I retorted to Willie. “Your last name isn’t too odd. But if anyone’s heard of dad, they’ll instantly know who I am from my last name. ‘Holmes.’ How many people have that last name?”

“At least you’re not Harry Potter,” Melody told us.

“Who’s that?” We both asked.

“You’ve never heard of Harry Potter?” Scott asked, amazed.

“Muggle parents,” I reminded him.

“Right, sorry,” Scott corrected himself. “He’s only one of the most famous wizards ever to have lived. Up there with Merlin. It was a while ago now, but he’s the one who beat you-know-who.” He visibly gulped. “Voldemort.” The name struck fear into him. It was plain in the face and the way he gulped. I hadn’t made it this far in Wizarding history to know who he was or what he did, but it must have been brutal, because that was the way someone told the Doctor that they had two shadows or that there was a Dalek behind him. “It must have been 20 years ago now, probably more, I’m no good at dates.” Scott continued with this whole long narrative about this Harry Potter, how he had been orphaned at the hands of Voldemort, this really evil wizard, and faced Voldemort a bunch of times while a student, and how literally everyone knew his name, and how he and his friends had finally beat Voldemort in this huge battle at Hogwarts.

The door slid open. “Food, dears?” an old lady asked us. Nothing on the food trolley looked familiar, and I was suspicious of it all. Melody and Scott both grabbed a few small things, and then looked at us expectantly, like we were supposed to buy something too. We did have a little bit of money left from the Diagon Alley trip.

“I don’t know what any of this is,” I confessed.

“Oh, get a chocolate frog,” Melody suggested. “You can start collecting the cards.” I looked at some of the other stuff. It just looked like wizard versions of familiar lollies upon closer inspection, so Willie and I grabbed a few things.

An announcement came on the public address system a while later, after the sun had set, to tell us that we were half an hour from Hogsmeade station, and that all students should be in their robes upon arrival. I grudgingly pulled my trunk down to get my robes out, as did Willie, Mels, and Scott. We peeked out to see other students milling about. Scott stopped a returning student to ask him where we could change.

“End of the carriage, there’s lavatories,” he told us. “Girls at the front and guys at the back of this one.” We split up accordingly.

“Do you want me to do your hair?” Melly asked me. I was still debating on a mental nickname for her. “I’m pretty good at braids.”

“Why not?” I replied, disinterestedly. I never was really big on styles. I much preferred ‘as long as it’s out of my face and I don’t look like I just got out of bed’ as my hairstyle, which usually meant mum did my hair in a ponytail or simple braid. “Let’s get changed and get back to our cabin, though.”

I felt the train stop.

“The train never stops before Hogsmeade!” one of the other girls who was changing exclaimed.


End file.
